This sounds like a very reasonable match of information between R1b1b2 distribution and archeology. However, I'm still have an uneasy feeling about it.

The queasiness comes from two other dimensions of the information. First the R1b1b2 TMRCA information. A 5500 BC TMRCA for L21 is 7500 ybp and that is double the kind of target dates that we've seen out of some very good estimation methods. ...

The second dimension of information is the spread of Indo-European Languages. They also have a dating of couple of thousand years more recent than the Neolithic advances. Someone had to bring IE to Western Europe.

Agreed. And the attempt to fit the spread of IE languages to the Neolithic has now developed an even greater flaw than the ones it already had. Renfrew's proposal that they spread from Anatolia was based on the fact that there were IE languages in Anatolia, (though not before about 3,000 BC, according to linguists).

The latest hole in the theory comes from research on Neolithic plants. The spread of species of cultivars indicated that farming didn't spread into Europe from Anatolia. It island-hopped from the Levant.

Renfrew's theory was so criticised by linguists that he modified it into a two-stage proposal. 1) Farmers spread from Anatolia speaking PIE. One group of same enter the Balkans, whence IE seeps into the western steppe.2) Second spread of IE languages from the steppe.

In fact that suffered from exactly the same flaw as his first proposal. PIE is a language of the Copper Age. The first farmers used digging sticks rather than ploughs. They had no wheels or wagons, no gold or silver. Yet the Indo-Europeans had words for all these things, rooted in PIE.

when considering alternatives that the copper age experts are basically seeing beaker culture's origin as Iberian

Scarcely. There is no greater English-speaking expert on Iberian Bell Beaker than Richard Harrison. And, as I keep pointing out, he has published the seminal article that connects the Yamnaya to Bell Beaker.

We need to clearly distinguish between a particular pottery shape and the rest of the Bell Beaker package, which is derived from Yamnaya. In fact the pottery shape is most probably derived from the same Balkan model that probably led to Funnel Beaker, and cord decoration is common on Yamnaya pots. But I don't want to digress at huge length into pottery.

MikeAnother way of putting it is what are the chances of two identical looking demographically massive looking explosive SE to NW spreads from Anatolia as far Atlantic Europe being entirely seperately identified by both the DNA experts and Archaeologists and them not being one and the same movement. No other archaeologically indicated movement comes near to correlating with the geography and direction of the R1b1b2 spread but the spread of the Neolithic farmers is a perfect match in terms of origin, direction of spread, explosive demographic effect etc. . . .

That was very nicely put. What are the chances indeed!

Yet there are at least two guys on Rootsweb still chatting up Paleolithic R1b1b2, one of whom just said P312 is "a remnant of the pre Ice Age population of Europe".

One problem here is that a series of migrations from the east into Europe are quite likely to follow similar routes, constrained by geography. We would expect some degree of similarity between the routes taken by early farmers and those taken by Copper Age people. There are two major differences:

1) The origin point. The Levant for the farmers, the Balkans/steppe for the Copper Age.

2) The speed of spread. Farming took 4,500 years to move from Cyprus (8,500 BC) to Britain (4000 BC). The Copper Age began in Europe 5000 BC, but stuck to the Balkans until 4000 BC, and even then was limited. Its further spread is mainly associated with the Yamnaya-derived cultures - under a millenium from leaving the steppe 3,100 BC to arriving at Ross Island 2,400 BC.

So from the data in the recent paper, 1) looks like a point in favour of the Neolithic for R1b1b2 spread.2) is in favour of the Copper Age for R1b1b2 spread, because of the rapid population growth signalled by the "star-clusters" of sub-clades.

P310 must have occurred at a point before those travelling along the Med. and those travelling up the Danube had parted e.g the Balkans. I think the distribution could suggest the same for S116 too....

Another significant P310 descendant population is R-U106 (S21). How does R-U106 fit into this scenario?

U106 is about the same age as P312 (S116) and got up to Northern Europe during this timeframe. I don't see U106 in the Balkans. Do you think it originated in Southern Germany?

Argiedude-so, in simple terms, what are you suggesting that indicates in terms of the origin and movement of R1b into Europe?

I'm not making my own proposal of how R1b spread, I'm just pointing out the contradictions of the Balaresque argument. According to it, ht15 should have the same diversity pattern as ht35, from southeast to northwest, because they were all born of the same SINGLE phenomenon. My results show the diversity patterns of ht15 and ht35 are almost polar opposites, thus Balaresque's conclusion is not sustained. Time to go back to the drawing board.

The idea is that the oldest R1b1b2, i.e., HT35, is found much more frequently in Anatolia and SE Europe than it is farther west, just as one would expect if R1b1b2 emerged from Anatolia, crossed into SE Europe and headed northwest. HT15, i.e., P310+, would have arisen somewhere in Europe.

But you see, you're expressing an alternative explanation of how R1b diffused. Balaresque's conclusion is that a SINGLE phenomenon caused modern R1b1b2's current distribution. Ht15 and ht35 all came in a single rolling wave. Ht15 was rare in Anatolia, but its frequency became pumped up to its current dominant status in Europe DURING the phenomenon of its introduction into Europe from Anatolia (this is the surfing-the-wavefront effect, in which computer simulations show that dna frequencies can change greatly at the front of an expanding wave of population diffusion).

What you're saying is different. You're saying ht35 moved into Europe and after it became established in Europe, a SECOND event occured, in Europe, this time involving ht15. My results support your line of reasoning. But this is not the Balaresque point of view.

I think looking at the origins of R1b1b2 clades and subclades in isolation is not a fruitful approach to real understanding.

Completely disagree. My results show ht15 was a SECONDARY phenomenon, ergo, it didn't take part in the Anatolia-to-Europe movement of R1b1b2. As such, we should discard ht15 samples when trying to understand how ht35, by itself, diffused into Europe, because including ht15 would make as much sense as including R1a or G2a.

You could say a similar thing for the case of M458 in Europe. It was thanks to the divergent haplotypes of this marker, which were sufficiently different from the R1a modal that we could already detect them and group them into clusters even before they were confirmed to an SNP clade, that Europe's R1a diversity was similar to India's. But now we can eliminate this background noise and concentrate on the diversity of the truly basal segments of R1a, before these secondary LATER phenomenons added noise to the picture, and thus we can now see that Europe's R1a1a* diversity is no longer on par with India's, it's notably less.

Or take M222. M222's modal is so different from R1b1b2, that if we included it in diversity estimates we might reach the conclusion that ht15 was born in Ireland! But we know that Irish M222 is a LATER phenomenon, so it's presence just adds noise to the picture. If we exclude them and calculate the diversity of the basal ht15 samples, then Ireland's R1b1b2 changes completely, and becomes one of the least diverse places in Europe.

it shows the big picture and that big picture is [...] moves from SE to west/north-west.

Sorry, but again, I think my results undermine Balaresque's conclusion. She found a southeast to northwest cline because ht35 is older and thus more diverse than ht15, so her results are going to reflect what percentage of a population's R1b1b2 belongs to ht15 or ht35. Anatolian R1b1b2 is almost 90% ht35, so it's going to get a high diversity, very close to ht35's true diversity. On the other hand, Italy's R1b1b2 is mostly ht15, even in the south, so Italy's R1b1b2 diversity is going to reflect ht15's younger age. But if we concentrate on ht35 alone, we find that Italy's ht35 diversity is IDENTICAL to Anatolia's ht35 diversity. And considering that my results also show that ht15 must be a SECONDARY phenomenon that occured AFTER the initial diffusion of R1b1b2-ht35, then we can question the manner in which this initial phenomenon occured. It could just as well have started in Italy, or Greece, as in Anatolia. And in a way, an Italian origin would make more sense, since it's at the center of R1b1b2's current distribution, thus we could envision a population explosion out of Italy, with one wave going to North Europe and another to southeast Europe. As opposed to an Anatolian origin, which would seem to be illogically obsessed with going in one direction, only.

[I don't believe anything of this is what really happened, I have a very unique view on how haplogroups diffused through the world.]

The idea is that the oldest R1b1b2, i.e., HT35, is found much more frequently in Anatolia and SE Europe than it is farther west, just as one would expect if R1b1b2 emerged from Anatolia, crossed into SE Europe and headed northwest. HT15, i.e., P310+, would have arisen somewhere in Europe.

But you see, you're expressing an alternative explanation of how R1b diffused. Balaresque's conclusion is that a SINGLE phenomenon caused modern R1b1b2's current distribution. Ht15 and ht35 all came in a single rolling wave. Ht15 was rare in Anatolia, but its frequency became pumped up to its current dominant status in Europe DURING the phenomenon of its introduction into Europe from Anatolia (this is the surfing-the-wavefront effect, in which computer simulations show that dna frequencies can change greatly at the forefront of an expanding wave of population diffusion).

What you're saying is different. You're saying ht35 moved into Europe and after it became established in Europe, a SECOND event occured, in Europe, this time involving ht15.

No. I am saying that R1b1b2 (M269+) is one thing and that HT15 (P310+ and its offshoots) is just a branch of R1b1b2.

That is not different from what Balaresque et al are saying.

M269 enters Europe during the Neolithic from Anatolia as HT35. In the course of its perambulations through Europe, its clades develop, including the P310+ (HT15) branch.

What Vince Vizachero has found via the HT35 Project is that HT35 pretty starkly decreases in frequency as one moves from SE to NW in Europe. So, the SNP trail is a SE to NW trail, and that is the same sort of trail the variance map in the Balaresque paper shows.

Fishing up some HT35 in Western Europe won't make HT35 more frequent there than it is in the East. The same is true in reverse geographical order for HT15.

“And in a way, an Italian origin would make more sense, since it's at the center of R1b1b2's current distribution, thus we could envision a population explosion out of Italy, with one wave going to North Europe and another to southeast Europe. As opposed to an Anatolian origin, which would seem to be illogically obsessed with going in one direction, only”.VERY GOOD FOR ME!

[I don't believe anything of this is what really happened, I have a very unique view on how haplogroups diffused through the world.]AND THEN?

I'm now thinking that my observation about ht35 & ht15's diversity would apply even if Balaresque was right and they both came out of Anatolia together. ht35 makes up 80% to 90% of Anatolia's R1b1b2, and 90% to 100% in the Levant, the Caucasus, and Iran, so it's clear that the Out-of-Anatolia diffusion consisted of an overwhelmingly ht35 group, with ht15 a small minority. But ht15 has since become a huge group in Europe. By including it in R1b1b2 diversity estimates, in those regions where ht15 has become the new majority we are measuring the diversity of a fraction of the original Out-of-Anatolia R1b group. So we should exclude ht15 and measure only the diversity of ht35 samples, who would have made up the overwhelming majority of the Out-of-Anatolia movement of R1b1b2. Ht15 just adds noise, wether it developed in Europe after the fact, or wether it came out of Anatolia together with ht35.

... Or take M222. M222's modal is so different from R1b1b2, that if we included it in diversity estimates we might reach the conclusion that ht15 was born in Ireland! But we know that Irish M222 is a LATER phenomenon, so it's presence just adds noise to the picture. ....

Sorry, but again, I think my results undermine Balaresque's conclusion. She found a southeast to northwest cline because ht35 is older and thus more diverse than ht15, so her results are going to reflect what percentage of a population's R1b1b2 belongs to ht15 or ht35. Anatolian R1b1b2 is almost 90% ht35, so it's going to get a high diversity, very close to ht35's true diversity. On the other hand, Italy's R1b1b2 is mostly ht15, even in the south, so Italy's R1b1b2 diversity is going to reflect ht15's younger age. But if we concentrate on ht35 alone, we find that Italy's ht35 diversity is IDENTICAL to Anatolia's ht35 diversity.....

Argiedue, first let me be clear that I really appreciate the time and effort you put into charting diversity. This is a very helpful perspective.

I am not familiar with the whole methodology you use. Do you have any information as it relates to "confidence interval" about which you think diversity you are calculating represents reality? The reason I ask is I know we don't have a lot of confirmed ht35 long haplotypes so you are forced into using STR proxies and a limited number of STR's to develop the diversity calculations.

I think you are saying there is NOT a great deal of difference in the diversity numbers that are found. If so, perhaps given the limited sampling and the use of proxies, the clines may be difficult to detect today.

It does bother me that M222+ is not included, regardless of the implication (even if I don't think L21+ is of Isles origin). M222+ is just another group of L21+ guys. I don't know why they shouldn't be included in a study of L21+. I do agree with your perspective that diversity outside a clade is "noise" but that same perspective makes it especially appropriate to consider the outlay of the whole array of SNP's of R1b1b2 in their hiearchical consideration. In other words, it's not just an ht15, ht35 thing. The whole sequence of R1b1b2 from L23+ to L150+ to L51+ to P310+/L11+, etc. should be considered, not a proxy for one event in the sequence.

I agree that data is limited, hence the need for proxies, but that is what makes me ask about the reliability of the findings.

EDIT: I see you may another post while I wrote this post. I'll study it further, but still trying to get a picture if there is enough firm data available to have reliable conclusions on diversity.

Hey, I am simply passing along praise for argiedude’s dedication to this hobby. If you don’t accept the fact that the amateurs are outperforming professional geneticists then that places you right along side David Faux who sings the praises of professional geneticists ever chance he gets.

I tend to agree with argiedude’s below assessment:

“And in a way, an Italian origin would make more sense, since it's at the center of R1b1b2's current distribution, thus we could envision a population explosion out of Italy, with one wave going to North Europe and another to southeast Europe. As opposed to an Anatolian origin, which would seem to be illogically obsessed with going in one direction, only”.

Yes, I know who Vineviz is. Certainly, he has contributed. Of that, there is no doubt.

“What he says you can take to the bank.”

Disagreements are common in this hobby. It looks to me like argiedude is doing good work. What I posted praised the man for his efforts in this hobby. I stand by my praise of argiedude’s dedication and hard work. Of course, he did say he did not believe a word of what he posted. Therefore, I will reserve judgment until we find out what he does believe. That seems fair to me.

“[I don't believe anything of this is what really happened, I have a very unique view on how haplogroups diffused through the world.]”

I do not have time to go through all the pros and cons of the theories relating to the interconnected archaeological, genetic, palaeoecological and linguistic data. It would take days. All I will say is its a huge pile of points and counterpoints and contradictory conclusions within and between all fields. These seem to be turned upside down about once a decade with ideas often going in and out of ascendancy and old rejected models coming back in. I actually remember the copper age theory being considered all but dead in some circles not so long ago and Mallory being colourfully described as having decided to fall as the last man on the battlefield of the copper age Indo-European theory. Then the model revived under Anthony etc. That is how much fashions go in and out on this matter. Personally I think the evidence is far from clear-cut (as both sides in the debate tend to present it as) and for every point there is always a counterpoint clouding and enough wriggle room (perhaps special pleading) to make no objection fatal to either theory. Given the stalemate I fall back on my gut feeling that the copper age model just seems to stray hugely from the Occam's Razor principle with its Byzantine complexity of interlinking cultures sometimes with fairly ephemeral evidence for crucial links in the chain as it attempts to explain the spread from the steppes to the Atlantic. I guess it either convinces you or it doesnt and it just does not feel right to me.

To see that published by some big names is progress because it has taken a long time for the pros to catch up with the amateurs on this subject. Right now I personally find the similarity of the spread of R1b and farming (and I accept there are counterarguements and evidence against) too much for coincidence. Whatever one's take on the paper, the paper supports a Neolithic (be that early or late) date and implies a broad origin area and direction of spread. It is a whole new thing now looking to Anatolia and probably the Levant and beyond before that as the 'old country' in deep time terms. It sort of gives an almost biblical epic feel to things knowing that the ancestral trail links back to an exodus from that area in the Neolithic.

Alan trowel hands writes: “It sort of gives an almost biblical epic feel to things knowing that the ancestral trail links back to an exodus from that area in the Neolithic”.

And this is the problem, that religious prejudices (Christian, Jewish and imagine how much Muslim) lead theories and expectations. The map posted by Vizachero to “Dienekes blog” would be ridiculous if wasn’t tragic. But we have the weapons of irony and grimaces:

The Vizachero’s map is the light from East, it is rather a picture of the Bible or of the Four Gospels than of a Genetics’ book.It lacks only the three Kings and the star of Bethlehem.

.... I based my predictions for L21 distribution that it would have a strong Rhine and northern French showing on a lmodel of an origin and spread via late Linearbandkeramik and LBK-descended middle Neolithic cultures like Rossen etc before many L21 results had come in and so far its matched to a surprising degree (allowing for some later expansion).

Would you include the Michelsberg culture as one of your "LBK-descended middle Neolithic cultures"?If so, there may be evidence for your position with Hg I-L38, who may have been "tribal brother" of R-L21*. Hans De Beule makes the case that I-L38 and R-L21* have coincident distribution patterns in his paper and that they may have come out of the Michelsberg culture as it blossomed from c. 6400 to 5500 ybp.Origins of Hg I-L38 (I2b2) Subclades - Hans De Beule – 5th of april 2009BTW, I-L38 is also found in the Lichenstein Cave.http://sites.google.com/site/haplogroupil38/

The following quote is just notes from another blog but I think the information is right.

Quote

The Rossen Culture may have spawned the Neolithic ("New Stone") Age in Britain. Neolithic farmers invaded Britain around 4000 BC. By about 3900 BC, they had pushed as far north as Yorkshire, and brutal border conflicts erupted with the previous Mesolithic ("Middle Stone") Age hunter-gatherers*. The invading Neoliths built Causewayed Enclosures like those seen earlier in Germany**, the oldest begun around 4000 BC***. These Causewayed Enclosures gradually developed from mere earthworks to wooden, and later stone, henges. They continued in unbroken use for thousands of years, only falling into disuse after 1000 BC#, around the time of the first Celtic invasions that brought the Iron Age to Britain.

I definitely agree the LBK and Impressed Wares advances (and their follow-on derivatives) are worth examining as the potential carrier of L21+ into the Isles. Given Alan R's comments about the Rössen Culture being a possible carrier of L21+ into the Isles, that draws out the question - Who were carriers of the Celtic languages into the Isles after the Rössen people? Were they just other variants of L21+ and P312* (along with a few other misc things)? Were they U152+ (David F's true Celtic)?

Alan trowel hands writes: “It sort of gives an almost biblical epic feel to things knowing that the ancestral trail links back to an exodus from that area in the Neolithic”.

And this is the problem, that religious prejudices (Christian, Jewish and imagine how much Muslim) lead theories and expectations. The map posted by Vizachero to “Dienekes blog” would be ridiculous if wasn’t tragic. But we have the weapons of irony and grimaces:

The Vizachero’s map is the light from East, it is rather a picture of the Bible or of the Four Gospels than of a Genetics’ book.It lacks only the three Kings and the star of Bethlehem.

I like you, Gioiello, but that is utter baloney.

I am a Christian, and I can tell you, most of those posting on Rootsweb and elsewhere are not Christian and do NOT seem to be influenced by religion whatsoever.

I don't think Vince is religious at all and even I, as a Christian (and I am not ashamed to say that I am a Christian), do not attempt to press genetics into the service of the Bible.

Christ needs no such feeble defenses.

I think you should restrict yourself to the actual arguments.

Besides, if religious prejudices exist, then it is also true that anti-religious prejudices exist and are influential in informing the opinions of some.